Shepherd's mission has a Yin and a Yang. The Yin is readers, and everything we do is designed to help them find amazing books in new and unique ways. I mention that in case someone thinks our focus is only on authors. I need to write more about readers and how we are helping them find books via their book DNA (and my long-term plans there). 

What is my two-pronged strategy for helping authors?

Summary if you can't watch the video:

1. Shepherd will create features to help authors get their books in front of the most likely readers for their book (and do so in a way that delights readers). 

2. Shepherd will create a platform for authors and book lovers to build a fan base around book recommendations. Not only is that great for readers, but it will create thousands of book recommendation channels for authors to reach different slices of readers. 

What are my specific goals for authors?

This won't be a burst of sales, but it should be consistent exposure month after month to the readers most likely to be interested in your book.

For new authors:

1. I want to help new authors sell their first 50 to 150 book sales that are not family and friends. This is an incredible barrier for most new authors. My goal is to help them find out if their book has that magic spark and reach 15 to 25+ reviews on Amazon to start the word-of-mouth machine. 

For all authors:

1. I want to give authors a consistent stream of sales by placing them in front of the most interested readers. The sales won't be a huge number, but they should be consistent exposure to the readers most interested in your book. Similar to if your mystery book was in a mystery-only bookstore to help it connect with the right readers. This helps build word-of-mouth virality with the people who could be your biggest fans. 

The next step is to figure out which books have that magic spark.

And how we can help those books get to thousands of sales, tens of thousands of sales, and further. 

As we grow, I plan to use data from readers and authors to identify books with that magic spark and help them freely get more publicity. 

Our first step toward this will be our "best books of the year" program (launching on November 1st, 2023). We are asking thousands of authors to share their "3 favorite reads in 2023," and we are going to split that into the "most-read books in 2023" and the "most-read books that were published in 2023". The results will be broken down by genre and help readers find books that have that magic spark for other readers.

We are very new and need to reach one million visitors a month. 

As of June 2023, we are two years old and still in our baby stage. We are also bootstrapped from my savings, and we've built everything you see with a part-time developer, myself, and a part-time designer (plus our fantastic team that manages publishing).

The bare minimum in traffic is 34,000 visitors a day (a million visitors a month). We would be financially sustainable at this level with our small team and one part-time developer. That means we can keep building new features at our current pace or faster. Even better would be the ability to hire a full-time developer in addition to our part-time dev (so we can build features faster for readers and authors).

Strategic Track #1:

Create features to help authors get their books in front of the most likely readers for their book (and do so in a way that delights readers).

How are we doing this right now?

• Our book recommendation lists where authors share five books they love around a topic, theme, or mood. Your list's topic/theme/mood should be close to your book so that every reader who visits your list will be interested in your book. Here is data on how well this works and a case study.

What's next on this track?

• In 2023, we will launch our new book launch program! This is a paid feature and part of our perks for Founding Members. This will help authors launch a new book by placing it in front of readers based on genre, topics, target reading age, and similar books/authors. 
• In 2024, we will launch a personalized book recommendation email feature. This will allow readers to pick their favorite books, authors, genres, and topics and get personalized book and book list recommendations to feed their curiosity every week (or every few weeks, depending on their pick). This will continuously feed targeted readers to your book lists. 
• In 2024, we will launch an interesting facts/stories feature. The idea is to get your book in front of readers interested in what your book covers by sharing some interesting facts/stories. For example, if your book is about the Battle of the Bulge, we will help you get in front of people looking for facts about the Battle of the Bulge, World War 2, and related topics.  
• In 2024, we will launch a way to introduce your characters to readers. This will allow readers to browse characters based on the attributes of that character. For example, if someone likes Bosch, we will help them meet other books with intense detectives with a passion for justice. 

Strategic goal #2:

Create a platform to build a fan base around book recommendations. 

How are we doing this right now?

• Our "3 favorite reads of the year" program is our first step here. We will ask readers who like your book recommendations to subscribe to your future recommendations via email. We will collect their email for now as we still need to complete the sending piece (that will come in 2024). 

What's next on this track?

• In 2024, we will launch our email channel. This will allow us to email readers who signed up to get notifications when someone they follow has new book recommendations out. 
• In 2024, we will add user accounts to the website. This will allow readers to subscribe to book recommendation personalities easily. This is also the first step in asking readers for their favorite books, authors, genres, topics, and themes so that we can match their book DNA to book recommenders. I am not sure how far we will get in 2024, but this is where we are headed. 

P.S. Do you want to help us grow faster?

I launched a membership program for founding members at the urging of authors and readers. 100% of the money goes toward developing new features and my goal of hiring a full-time developer (currently, we only have one part-time developer).